Ignorant voters = authoritarianism?; What is antisemitism?

A NYT opinion (not behind paywall) by David French opines: 

It’s not often that a poll result causes me to do a double take. This month, however, a Pew Research Center survey grabbed my attention. As part of a comprehensive poll on the importance of religion in public life, Pew compared Americans’ knowledge of and support for Christian nationalism between September 2022 and February 2024 and found no meaningful change at all. The exact same percentage of Americans said they’d heard or read about Christian nationalism — 45 percent in 2022 and 45 percent in 2024. The exact same percentage of Americans said they’d never heard or read about Christian nationalism — 54 percent in both years.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized my surprise was misplaced. .... The Hidden Tribes of America project, which was put together by a group called More in Common. It surveyed 8,000 Americans to try to explore their attitudes and conflicts beyond the red-blue divide, and one of its central conclusions is critical to understanding the modern moment: Only a minority of Americans are truly active in political debates, and they’re exhausting and alienating the rest of the country.

One-third of Democrats post political content on social media; two-thirds do not. And the differences between the two groups were significant. Online Democrats were far more liberal, disproportionately white and far more likely to engage in activism, such as attending a protest or donating to a candidate. .... The highly polarized left and the highly polarized right shared characteristics. For example, the most polarized conservatives are also disproportionately white and are almost twice as likely to list politics as a hobby.

One friend told me, “I got sick of the constant rage.” So he deleted his social media accounts, turned his cable television from Fox News to ESPN and never looked back. “My blood pressure is down,” he said, “and I’m a better husband and father.” Good for him, I thought, but bad for us. Another decent man has disengaged. Another member of the jury has left the courtroom.

What is one to make of this? People disengage because of the ferocious emotional and mendacious games that Faux News and other authoritarian radical right (ARR) sources routinely employ to divide, deceive, distract, polarize and otherwise de-rationalize people. It drives some people away. That is one of the key things what the elites that drive America’s ARR wealth and power movement want, along with bad things like fomenting irrational deceit, distrust and polarization.

Q: Does this opinion strike you as unreasonably bothsidesism (false balancing) by roughly equating the left and the right, or is it just me who sees it that way? 

“Counting” ballots in Russia

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In view of endless, bitter controversy, it seemed reasonable to think that antisemitism is an essentially contested concept. Apparently some others have come to the same conclusion. The NYT writes:

Definitions of the term are highly contested, so a group monitoring antisemitism on Columbia University’s campus has avoided picking sides. It is still facing criticism.

A Columbia University task force set up to combat antisemitism on campus in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks is attempting to avoid one of the most contentious issues in university debates over the war: Its members have refused to settle on what the definition of “antisemitism” is.

Competing factions on campus and beyond are pushing for two different definitions. The first, favored by the U.S. State Department and many supporters of Israel, says “targeting of the state of Israel” could be antisemitic, a definition that could label much of the pro-Palestinian activism sweeping campus as antisemitic.

The second is narrower. It distinguishes between anti-Zionism and antisemitism and could lead to criticism that the school is not taking antisemitism seriously enough.

The debate over the definitions has become a lightning rod for the Columbia task force and for other universities around the country. The task force is charged with “understanding how antisemitism manifests on campus” and improving the climate for Jewish faculty and students. But the refusal to pick a definition has also been met with harsh criticism on both sides.

“If you don’t diagnose the problem, you don’t have to deal with it,” said Shai Davidai, a Columbia professor who is Israeli and favors the more sweeping definition. He added, “Saying we don’t want to define it so we don’t have a problem, that’s copping out.”

Pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist faculty and students, quite a few of whom are Jewish, fear that without a definition, the antisemitism task force could be too sweeping in the speech and activity it seeks to regulate.

My intuition is that distinguishing between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is better than not distinguishing, but even that alone might not be sufficient for a definition. But since I am too ignorant of too much related to Israel and Palestine, leaving the definition up to experts seems to be reasonable. Let them fight it out.

Good grief, what a hopeless mess.

An expert opines on fascism & DJT

Salon interviewed NYU historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat (RBG). She wrote Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. Some of the Q&A from the interview:

“He’ll never leave”: Why Trump’s dynasty, built on corruption 

and violence, won't end with him

Ben-Ghiat sees Trump’s promise to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as intended to inspire his supporters to commit future acts of violence if that can help him win.

Ben-Ghiat says she’s not trying to scare us, only to prepare us for what we’re likely to see between now and November — and for a good while after that if Trump wins. Too many Americans still don’t believe, Ben-Ghiat warns, that “it can happen here” — “it” being a fascist takeover. History tells us those people are wrong.

Salon: You’ve been discussing and studying this issue for years, but it seems even more important than ever to talk about authoritarianism.

RBG: It’s incredible that it could be upon us. Here’s Trump saying he’s going to be a “dictator for day one,” but we know that they’re never dictators for day one. They never relinquish their powers, so it’s extremely important to understand what we’re up against.

 

Salon: .... the GOP base and millions of Americans still love him. What do you take from that?

RBG: Sadly, in history, when these charismatic demagogues come to power, they use emotions to manipulate people. Trump says, “I love you” to his people. He told them he loved them on Jan. 6. He builds a personality cult so he poses as the victim, which is really important because not only are all his crimes presented as persecutions by the “deep state,” but saying he’s being persecuted makes his followers feel protective of him.

You have quotes from MAGA people saying, “Oh, it’s so distressing. We have to be there for him.” That’s what Jan. 6 was. It was many things. It was a violent coup attempt. But he was a leader in distress and he called on people, he brought them to the rally and they responded.

Salon: Is history warning us about the fact that Trump has not been held accountable by the system? There was such a long delay in investigating him. He’s finally charged and now he’s using his lawyers to manipulate the system to keep him on the ballot, and maybe not have any of the serious criminal trials before Election Day.

RBG: It’s very disheartening, and no one is going to save the American people. We’ve got to do it. We can’t depend on our institutions, which is very sad in a democracy. But our democracy has been so damaged, including the Supreme Court with Justice Thomas who wouldn’t recuse himself. There’s a whole attempt to delegitimize democracy, and not just Joe Biden, but the whole system. So we have to do this from the ground up.

Salon: From an academic point of view, is MAGA an authoritarian movement? Is it a fascist movement? Where does it fall?

It’s pretty fascist. 

The reason I wrote “Strongmen” was to have this 100-year history of authoritarianism, almost all right-wing, because that’s my specialty. Obviously communists had a higher body count than fascism, so I could have put them in there, but for narrative and other reasons, I focus on the right wing. Fascism was the first stage of authoritarianism, but it continued in different forms, like the Cold War military dictatorships.

Trump is very similar to Mussolini in many ways. It checks all the boxes, where it’s this huge right-wing counterrevolution against the loss of white male privilege, and it’s to save civilization, and the whole “great replacement” theory, which is big in the MAGA base, the idea that nonwhites and non-Christians are having too many babies: We’re going to be extinguished. Mussolini talked about this too. You can track a whole series of checkpoints and talking points, and they’re pretty much the same. 

Salon: If Trump wins in 2024, do you think he would leave office peacefully in 2028?

RBG: No. He’ll never leave, and if he falls ill or something, there’s other Trumpers waiting in the wings. It’s a dynasty. You could even see they’re talking about Jared Kushner as secretary of state, which would be perfect for crime, for corruption.

The interview transcript continues along these lines at length. The whole interview is here:

A TTKP platform reveals a mountain of dirty laundry; Going woke about Christian nationalism

The intercept reports about unpopular and damaging TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party) policy proposals that are revealed in a 180-page austerity manifesto entitled Fiscal Sanity to Save America: 

HOUSE REPUBLICANS WANT TO BAN 

UNIVERSAL FREE SCHOOL LUNCHES

The Republican Study Committee’s annual budget also calls to permanently defund UNRWA and eliminate the National Labor Relations Board

ON WEDNESDAY, THE Republican Study Committee, of which some three-quarters of House Republicans are members, released its 2025 budget entitled “Fiscal Sanity to Save America.” Tucked away in the 180-page austerity manifesto is a block of text concerned with a crucial priority for the party: ensuring children aren’t being fed at school.

Eight states offer all students, regardless of household income, free school meals — and more states are trending in the direction. But while people across the country move to feed school children, congressional Republicans are looking to stop the cause.

The budget — co-signed by more than 170 House Republicans — calls to eliminate “the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) from the School Lunch Program.” The CEP, the Republicans note, “allows certain schools to provide free school lunches regardless of the individual eligibility of each student.”

This year, the Biden administration further expanded the CEP, allowing another estimated 3,000 school districts to serve students breakfast and lunch at no cost.

Instead of universality, the RSC suggests sending block grants for child nutrition programs to states, to give them “needed flexibility” to “promote the efficient allocation of funds to those who need it most,” while avoiding “widespread fraud.”

Republicans however view the universal version of the policy as fundamentally wasteful. The “school lunch and breakfast programs are subject to widespread fraud and abuse,” reads the RSC’s proposed yearly budget, quoting a report from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. The Cato report blames people who may “improperly” redeem free lunches, even if they are technically above the income cutoff levels. The “fraudulence” the think tank is concerned about is not some shadowy cabals of teachers systematically stealing from the school lunch money pot: It’s students who are being fed, even if their parents technically make too much to benefit from the program. In other words, Republicans’ opposition to the program is based on the assumption that people being “wrongly” fed at school is tantamount to abusive waste.

“If the program is designed to offer free meals to all students,” FitzSimons said, “that question about fraud really disappears if you’re allowed to serve every single child.”

Regarding global warming, the manifesto actually uses the words “climate” and “environment” indicating a major shift that at least acknowledges the existence of a disputed issue. Nonetheless, none of those mentions has anything to do with addressing climate change or protecting the environment. The manifesto opposes a carbon tax and proposed (i) giving oil and gas companies deductions for labor and safety costs and increasing oil, and gas projects on federal lands, and (ii) defunding the Environmental Protection Agency.

The TTKP intends to undercut or block a slew of gun regulations such as “defunding the constitutionally dubious red flag provisions in the so-called Bipartisan Safer Communities Act” (gutting gun safety laws). More bullets will be flying free and wild in American society. 

Other radical TTKP budget priorities include (i) eliminating all future funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees and getting rid of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau  (gutting consumer’s protections); (ii) reducing funding for the famously under-supported Occupational Safety and Health Administration (gutting worker’s protections); and (iii) eliminating the National Labor Relations Board (gutting worker’s protections).

No wonder the TTKP has been reluctant to publish a document like this. Most of its policy goals are opposed by most Americans, including most pro-democracy and pro-civil liberties citizens.

I am just a happy guy gutting school lunches and 

gun safety laws while promoting more global warming!!

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Mother Jones has apparently gone woke about Christian nationalism, unless it already was woke and I missed it:

It’s a Good Time to Start Worrying About Christian Nationalism

In response to rising concern among liberals and others about the spread of Christian nationalism, conservative voices have been pressing a counterattack, claiming all this fretting is just lefty hysteria from secularists who are not willing to acknowledge the role of Christianity in American society and who want to brand all politically active Christians as extremists. Last year, the far-right Heritage Foundation published an article declaring that Christian nationalism is a term “mostly used as a smear against conservative Christians who defend the role of religion in American public life” and that the “lack of standard definition allows critics to bundle evils like white supremacy and racism with standard conservative views on marriage, family, and politics.”

By now, you’ve heard of Project 2025, the enterprise established by the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing outfits to both set a radical-right agenda for a possible second Trump term and recruit Dear Leader loyalists for government posts in that administration. As I’ve noted, this venture has cooked up plans and measures with an authoritarian bent. It also has been preparing to inject Christian nationalist ideas into a Trump 2.0 presidency.

The anti-anti-Christian nationalists’ effort to cast libs as the-sky-is-falling worrywarts is either naive or a purposeful effort to deflect attention from this threat to civil society. And though it usually is best to avoid dependence on one data point, allow me to zero in on a single tweet that appeared recently to highlight the danger.

Following President Joe Biden’s recent State of the Union speech, William E. Wolfe, a midlevel official at the Pentagon and the State Department during the Trump administration and a Christian nationalism advocate, tweeted out his response. Here it is in full:

My response to the #SOTU:

We need to see the deeper spiritual realities at play. This ain’t just a political fight, it’s a spiritual war. Heaven and Hell are real. Demons exist.

And there are two main demons being worshipped in America right now:

1) Molech, who demands child sacrifice (abortion)

2) Baphomet, whose demonic goat-like representation is gender-bending (LGBTQIA+) The “Equality Act” and “Reproductive Rights” aren’t just “policies” that the radical Left/Democrats support

They are sacraments, acts of worship to their demon gods

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12

It’s time for Christians to call on America to repent of our idol worship of demons and return to the One True Living God and His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ

Maybe God raise up more idol smashers for our days yet. 

This tweet illustrates a basic component of Christian nationalism: spiritual warfare. That’s the notion that all that transpires in our world is a manifestation of the mammoth and eternal clash between God and Satan. The tussle over abortion is not an argument between fellow citizens with conflicting views on bodily autonomy or the question of when life begins; it is a battle between Jesus and Lucifer. Consequently, those who support reproductive freedom are demons or, at the least, in league with or controlled by demons. 

Wolfe sees the political opposition to Trump, Christian fundamentalism, and conservatism as literally a satanic force. How then can he and his comrades expect to have civil discourse with it?

Ah, Molech and Baphomet. They’re sneaky stinkers. We gotta watch out for ’em. 👀

Not really. We gotta watch out for freak TTKP Christian nationalists. 

Breaking news: DJT may have been bailed out by investors who now presumably own him

Various sources are reporting that DJT has probably managed to weasel his way out of economic collapse in the face of lawsuits. The Hill reports:

Shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) approved a merger with former President Trump’s media startup on Friday, teeing up Truth Social’s stock market debut and a potential $3.5 billion windfall for Trump.

The long-delayed merger between the blank check company and Trump Media & Technology Group received regulatory approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month.

Trump stands to make about $3.5 billion from the deal, given the nearly 79 million shares he would control in the newly merged company.

It is reasonable to think that relevant investors now own DJT, including if he gets re-elected. The deal seem to be bogus because the underlying asset, Truth Social, is worthless crap, as the WaPo reports:

The merger will net Trump Media $300 million that Digital World initially raised from investors. Trump’s allies and company executives will also be granted bundles of shares in the new company that could be worth millions of dollars. But trading on the stock market will also open the company to more public scrutiny, and any drops in share prices would affect the value of those stakes.

Critics have said Trump Media is a “meme stock” with a more than $6 billion valuation they say is out of sync with its financial outlook. Trump Media lost $49 million in the first nine months of last year and brought in $3.4 million in revenue, Digital World said in an SEC filing.

A lockup provision in the merger agreement will also prevent Trump and other major investors from selling their shares for six months unless he is granted a waiver by the post-merger company’s board.

That could limit Trump’s ability to use the windfall to help pay off the hundreds of millions of dollars he owes in legal judgments. Trump does not have the cash to secure a bond that would delay enforcement of the $464 million judgment in a New York fraud case, his lawyers said. If he does not post a bond by Monday, the state’s attorney general could move to seize his bank accounts, real estate and other assets.

Any lockup change or waiver will be decided by the post-merger company’s board, which will be stocked with Trump allies, an SEC filing shows. The board’s nominees include Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.; Trump’s former trade representative, Robert E. Lighthizer; Linda McMahon, who headed the Small Business Administration under Trump; and Kash Patel, who served on Trump’s National Security Council.  

The post-merger company, which will be called Trump Media, could begin trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange as soon as Monday under the ticker symbol of Trump’s initials, DJT.

How on Earth could serious money be invested in this particular small, long-standing money losing social media asset? It lost $49 million on $3.4 million in revenue over a 9 month period. There very likely is a hidden quid pro quo going on here. It will be kept secret from us, very likely involving nepotism, cronyism, bribery, corruption and/or treason.

The company’s corrupt board will probably approve a waiver to allow DJT to sell stock now, presumably causing stock price to crash. Whether there is enough time for DJT to save his assets from court seizure is not clear to me. Today is Friday and DJT has to post a bond by Monday. Stock does not start trading until Monday, leaving DJT essentially no time to sell stock and post a bond to protect his real estate assets.

There is some speculation that DJT has raised bond money from people or sources he refuses to disclose. One source posits that corrupt Saudi thugs and/or corrupt Russian oligarchs are possible buyers of DJT.

A New York state trial court judge applies cognitive biology: The hunting humans analogy

The 14 minute video posted below presents the most cognitive biology and social behavior-attuned legal reasoning I am aware of in response to the poison that social media routinely promotes and spreads for profit. The legal argument is presented in the legal framework of products liability law (defective products liability). That is one of the few legal avenues available to try to attack toxic social media. 

This may be the first time a products liability attack has been tried. But the underlying rationale is science-based. The trial court speaks of minds and radicalization. Those are things not usually discussed in commerce and politics for damned good reasons in the eyes of the rich, powerful or ideologically radicalized. Social media hate speech and lies is the product that is defective when it radicalizes and weaponized minds and that leads poisoned minds to kill or injure others.

Key things to pay attention to in this video: 

• Legal reasoning: Hate and radicalizing speech are a product on social media platforms. That product is promoted to increase profit. The profit motive allows one to connect the product with defective products liability law, thereby avoiding a free speech defense by social media owners. The radicalizing content here is argued to be beyond protected free speech.

• Section 230 of the Communications Act has two key provisions. One is a shield that protects social media companies from liability for the content on the platform that social media users post. The other provision, and this one is widely ignored by social media and the MSM, social media is shielded by a Good Samaritan clause that shields it from liability for removing content that social media platform controllers deem to be objectionable. In other words, social media controllers are not obligated to take down hate or radicalizing speech (or any other kind of speech), but if they do they are protected from liability.

Will this hold up on appeal? It just might!!

The social media companies in this lawsuit tried but failed to get this case moved to federal court. That might be the basis on which this decision hold up on appeal. If  the case is based on state law, the USSC might not have jurisdiction to hear an appeal. The video says that this case is trapped in New York state courts and it cannot be appealed to the USSC due to federalism and jurisdiction limits.

Perplexity comments on this key point: The US Supreme Court generally does not have jurisdiction to review a state court decision that rests on an adequate, independent state ground, even if the state court incorrectly decided a federal question. This limitation is due to federalism principles and the jurisdictional requirements of Article III of the US Constitution, which mandate an actual "case or controversy" for federal courts to intervene. Therefore, when a state court's judgment is based on a nonfederal ground that is sufficient to support the decision, the US Supreme Court will not review it.

But, if this can be appealed to the USSC. My estimate is that there is about a 96% chance the decision will be reversed on appeal by at least a 5-4 majority. If nothing else, the six TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party)-dominated USSC will not tolerate legal reasoning that threatens social conscience-free capitalism. Those judges are plutocrats. Plutocrats hate all business regulations and any whiff of social conscience that gets in the way of profit.  I am unsure of how the three Dem judges on the USSC would decide if this case ever gets into the USSC for a decision.

In my opinion, the trial court judge here got it exactly right. But plutocratic, brass knuckles capitalist TTKP USSC judges will try hard to concoct a way take the case and protect huge social media corporations. If the radical USSC authoritarians can’t weasel their way into asserting jurisdiction, this state court decision could be a really huge thing. It could wind up saving lives, and maybe even our democracy and civil liberties.

My thanks to Larry Motuz for bringing this video to my attention.

House TTKP members shield Kushner; Christian criminality

Mediaite reports that House TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party) members blithely rejected a motion to investigate Jared Kushner business dealings with a murdering Saudi Prince:

Six months after exiting the White House, Kushner’s private equity firm Affinity Partners received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund over the objections of the fund’s advisers. They were overruled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who had developed a close relationship with Kushner.

The Oversight Committee convened on Wednesday for another hearing on Hunter Biden and his business dealings that Republicans say illicitly benefitted his father President Joe Biden. Despite investigating the matter for more than a year, the committee has turned up no proof.

During the hearing, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said Kushner had done “good work” as White House adviser when he helped forge the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and the states of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

“Of course, the Democrats don’t wanna admit that,” Jordan said.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) followed by making a motion to subpoena Kushner.

“Mr. Chairman, I have a motion,” he told Chair James Comer (R-KY). “I have a motion. I would move… that the committee issue a subpoena to Jared Kushner to compel testimony related to the $2 billion collected from Saudi Arabia after his service within the White House.”

After the motion was seconded, Jordan moved to table – or kill – the motion.

“Move to table the motion,” he said.

Once again, we see TTKP hypocrisy in defense of indefensible corruption. The moral rot is deep and out in the open.

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Citing research that is behind a paywall, the Friendly Atheist reports about worldwide Christian criminality that recent research turned up:

Researchers say Christian leaders will 

embezzle an estimated $86 billion in 2024

In 2024, Christian leaders around the world will embezzle an estimated $86 billion from their followers.

That “ecclesiastical crime” will jump to approximately $390 billion by 2050, according to researchers Dr. Gina Zurlo, Dr. Todd Johnson, and Peter Crossing at the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, part of the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

The numbers are tucked away in a larger report about global Christianity published in the January issue of the International Bulletin of Mission Research.

The Christian ministry watchdog group Trinity Foundation summarized the problem this way:

Ecclesiastical crimes take on many forms such as skimming from an offering plate, restricted donation fraud (diverting mission donations to a personal expense account), and international cash smuggling.

Televangelists have transferred funds across international borders on private jets and failed to report these transactions resulting in “bulk cash smuggling.”

We know these sorts of shenanigans occur because, frequently, Christian leaders are arrested for financial crimes. It’s incredibly hard, however, to pinpoint exactly how much crime occurs under the veil of Christianity. That can be blamed on everything from the fact that churches don’t have to file financial reports with the IRS, to the fact that they often blame crime on everything but religion, to the fact that they may not want to go public about [fleecing the flock]. In many ways, it’s like tracking sales in a black market; the very nature of how they operate—out of public sight—makes it hard to quantify.  

[In an earlier 2015 paper, the researchers] calculated, if Christians around the world gave $850.9 billion to charity and $773.5 billion to Christian causes specifically, that would suggest about $50 billion and $46 billion, respectively, “lost to fraud and embezzlement.”  

In the newer 2024 paper, with updated numbers, the researchers say that Christians all over the world will give about $1.3 trillion to Christian causes… which would result in about $86 billion lost to ecclesiastical crime.

By 2050, they estimate, the $5.2 trillion given to Christian causes could lead to $390 billion lost to fraud.

I have pointed out repeatedly that core goals of the corrupt American Christian nationalism wealth and power movement includes (ii) get taxpayers to pay for all religious operations, and (ii) replace all (100%) secular public schools with religious schools, also paid for by taxpayers. This research on theft by Christians is in synch with the larger Christian nationalist goal of raiding the US treasury to pay for Christian operations and social indoctrination via schools.